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Active cases have been dropping steadily since early January and are now down to mid-November levels. Numbers rose steadily from October 01 to December 31. The squiggles between December 24 and January 07 were partially due to delayed reporting of recovery numbers.

The graphs above were created from Statistics Canada data available here:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/13-26-0003/2020001/COVID19-eng.zip

The latest COVID  boogeymen to appear are mutations or variants of COVID-19. Viruses mutate and always have. The difference is that we can now rapidly identify mutations, which we could not do in 2009 during the H1N1 flue. Some people speculate that the variants are more infectious than the original, but we do not know if that is accurate. Considering the level of misinformation, we have reason to be cautious about new claims.

One year later, COVID-19 has infected just over 820,000 people or about 2.2% of our population. Of those infected, 2.6% have died, 92.6% have recovered, and 4.8% are active (awaiting an outcome). Of the 39,000 pending a result, we can expect about 1,000 to die.

About 68% of all COVID deaths have been in long-term care facilities. That was unacceptable in April and May of 2020. Having fresh outbreaks in November and December is repulsive and unacceptable. Vulnerable people were not protected.
https://ltc-covid19-tracker.ca/

We need to reopen businesses and services. We are entitled to receive full information on COVID-19 cases, including recoveries and the numbers of active cases. Armed with adequate and appropriate information, we can decide where to spend our energy, time and money and which people, situations and venues we will avoid.